The Second Night
by HappierThanMost
Summary: Darry is working hard to keep it together the day after his parents' accident. Sodapop has a different way of coping, and it just might end up saving his brother.


**THE SECOND NIGHT**

I've moved within this last 24 hours like the survivor of some explosion. My head is still ringing, I walk unbalanced, dazed from the shrapnel that has rained down on all three of us. My little brothers' wretched cries and almost primal moaning were last night's soundtrack, and today I've thrown myself into all that needs to be done, trying desperately to erase what I'd heard, knowing that can never happen.

Thankful for a numb detachment that has settled over me, I somehow make it through the cold morgue, the painful meeting at the funeral home, an intense stare down with a social worker in a dingy downtown office. I check off my to do list methodically, even think to pull into a phone booth and contact OSU to withdraw my name from the spring roster. Just as I hang up the phone, I feel my stomach somersault when I realize my entire world is falling in on itself like a house in an earthquake, and it might just suck me with it, straight down into the gaping earth. I stand frozen in the booth, staring out at the people who pass by, their coats pulled up close against the wind, stepping over dirty melted snow puddles, some making it, some missing their marks, and I watch their faces scrunch up when the dark water splashes up their legs. Every one of them are completely oblivious that Darrel and Maggie Curtis no longer walk this Earth. And God I hate them for that.

I notice night has stealthily crept in. And suddenly I'm pulled back home, a tug from deep within that I'd escaped in the light of day. But now, I'm led back to my brothers. I always will be. That need to protect them has been burning inside of me since the day I looked down on one helpless, squirming baby with a big pair of eyes and an even bigger set of lungs. I was too young to identify it then. But over the years it has reared its head in countless situations, no matter the significance. I can tease my brothers, wrestle them off a couch and pound them into a floor, but you sure as hell can't.

My headlights shine on the little white house, its leftover colored Christmas bulbs unlit but still hanging there to remind me what we were a mere eight days ago. Laughing, loving, opening cheap but meaningful presents in the light of glowing pine needles, a family of five. With a steadying breath I gather the courage to leave the quiet of the truck and I make my way back to this shadow of what was once a home.

The lights are off on the porch, only one shines inside from the kitchen, and I peer into the window before I enter. With a bowed head, Soda sits alone at the table, his hands are folded in prayer and my eyes widen when he makes the sign of the cross. We haven't been to church in years, but I suppose my mother's spirituality had already left its mark on us long ago, as she encouraged our boyhood ritual of prayers before bedtime. Sure all three of us have prayed in the most trivial situations: before a test, or a drag race, or kneeling in front of the TV begging loudly to God for our favorite team to catch the winning touchdown pass. But, I guess it shouldn't surprise me the gravity of this occasion has brought Sodapop back to his roots, clinging to his long-ago faith and with that, a piece of Mom.

I see Pony enter the kitchen slowly, engulfed by his plaid blanket, still looking shellshocked as he takes a seat before his dinner of cereal. His sock feet bounce restlessly on the table's base and suddenly Soda hops up, stands by Pony and he's cutting a banana swiftly with one hand, his thumb deft and in control of the knife, and the thin slices are falling into the cornflakes like rapid gunfire.

I pause before turning the knob and silently say, "Dad, please help me."

I enter quietly and Soda greets me with a soft "hey" but Pony makes no sound. I hang up my coat, and curse the dry and deteriorating Christmas tree that now mocks us in the corner, its smell still pungent. I enter the kitchen and they both look to me, their eyes lost, but not without hope. My skin starts to crawl once I realize their hope is entirely in me.

I clear my throat and face them. "Okay," I clap my hands together, "here's what we're gonna do." And I lean on the table, palms down, laying out my plan to them as if we're in a huddle, and I'm calling the plays to my team. "Like I said, we're gonna stay together. I'm not gonna go back to Stillwater, and I've already called up to get a full time position with Mr. Carlson. After we get through this funeral, y'all will go back to school, back to track, your friends, and I'll work and we're gonna make it. It's what Mom and Dad want for us." I look to both of them, their eyes rimmed red, Soda looking one hundred and Pony looking five. "Somehow we're gonna find a new normal. And it'll be okay." I finish my pep talk with a positive nod and hope they buy it.

Pony's eyes narrow and the corner of his top lip shoots up. "Oh yeah Darry. It's gonna be so normal," he says sarcastically but with a choked voice, and he pushes away his cereal and heads to his bedroom. I wait for a door that never slams. He has softly closed it and I'm confused by him as usual, and Soda reaches over and puts his hand over mine. "He's been lashin' out a lot today, " he says tenderly. "You didn't say nothin' wrong."

I hear Pony trying to lose himself in his music and I wonder how he stands to hear Turn, Turn, Turn right now. He must find comfort in hearing "There is a season..and a time to every purpose under Heaven." But I don't. And then, once the song says, "A time to be born, a time to die," we hear a pair of size 7 Converse crash violently against the wall in succession, and even the Byrds can't drown out the sobs that are now escaping Pony's closed off bedroom.

I begin washing the cereal bowls, busying myself with anything to avoid my next task, my most dreaded. Soda is beside me before I know it, a walking bundle of raw emotions, exposed nerves and feelings, just as it's always been. I can't help but envy him. He hates how emotional he is, thinks it's a weakness to wear it all on your sleeve. But I think he's the strongest of us all. He dives in headfirst, surrendering to emotion's every intense wave, tossed about by the undertow, and then walks out of the storm with calm and closure, marching forward as if he'd never been touched.

With his hand on my arm I can tell he's trying to fully read my face when he says, "Darry, why don't ya let me do somethin'. I wanna help you with….all of it." I know I'm shutting him out, because I can't go there with him just yet. And I certainly would never put him through the cruel and unusual punishment of picking out our parents' burial clothes.

"Thanks Soda. I've got it under control," I say with confidence as I'm putting away the bowls.

He isn't quite accepting my facade though and he tries again. "Really Darry. Let me." I just look at him as I wipe my hands with a dish towel.

 _Yes, Soda. Please. Help me. In fact, you can take it all over. I give. Let me curl up in some dark room and you go in mom's drawer and pick out a pair of underwear for her. Because I know I can't._

I smile my appreciation as I squeeze his shoulder. "Soda, you can help me with Ponyboy. Just make sure he's still standin' by the end of the week." He realizes he can't reach me in this moment, and so he forfeits with a nod and slowly leaves for Pony's room. But, he knows he'll get me to open up sooner or later. He always does.

As I'm tying up the trash bag, I think "At least we're much better off than we were last night," the night which keeps coming back to me in bits and pieces, scenes of it violating my mind, appearing as if through harsh camera flashes. I see the cops at the door, the boys' stunned faces, Pony's collapse, all of us entangled on the couch for hours, the sounds of grief and devastation, fluctuating between subtle whimpers and thunderous wails . And I see where it ended; the morning light seeping through the bathroom window, where all three of us slept on the floor or the bathtub, after tending to Ponyboy, who simply could not stop throwing up.

I am stunned, really, that we survived such a brutal night.

After taking out the trash, tackling some of the Christmas decorations, and answering a few phone calls from Two Bit, Steve and Tim, who was surprisingly eloquent with expressing his sympathies, I sit at the table in front of the meal of choice around here, cornflakes. My stomach has a growl and it's bordering between hunger and nausea, but I know I should try and get something down.

Soda enters the kitchen, wiping his eyes with the bottom of his unbuttoned flannel. He sits at the table with hair as wild and untamed as his feelings, and informs me "He's finally sleepin'," with a sigh of relief.

He's drumming his fingers on the table, his knee keeps bobbing and I know he's gearing up to tell me something. And he sits up straight to deliver it. "Pony thinks Mom should wear her yellow dress, the one with the short sleeves," and he hardly finishes before he leans back in the chair, covering his distorted face with his two hands, and his body convulses, and I feel a million miles away from him as I watch, my spoon cold in my hand.

I can't do anything but stare and swallow, and then we feel the low familiar rumblings of the house shaking on its foundation, a reverberation deep within its bones, disturbed by a passing train, and Soda is spared temporarily from his weeping. He looks up at me with teary eyes, a thorough sniff and even a little laugh when he shrugs and holds his hands up, "Grief sure is messy, ain't it?" he says with a crooked, quivering smile and a breathy little hiccup, the kind that accompanies labored crying. And that's all it takes. I feel something within me travel that million mile distance in a millisecond, almost feel the roar of the rushing wind as I suddenly line up with all of his thoughts, and I now feel as close to my brother as his own skin.

The room has grown blurry and liquified by my tears springing forth and I'm shaking my head while his gaze keeps penetrating, both of us knowing where this is going. I fight it while he continues to lock my eyes. _Why does he have to look at me like this?_ He just sits there, patiently waiting for my dam to burst. He's the one who poked his finger in it, after all. "Don't, don't, please," I keep repeating in a panicked whisper. "Please, please don't, don't do this to me now Soda. I can't," I am begging him. My neck is hot, my chest has tightened and my hands grip my chair, while he continues to torture me with those eyes that are all at once powerful and kind. I twist in the chair, and inside myself.

I don't want to go there….I haven't prepared for this…I'm too tired…If I start, I won't stop. But no amount of excuses will bail me out of this free fall I'm about to drop into, and if I hadn't heard my chair scrape the floor and come crashing down behind me, I wouldn't have realized I've come around to Soda to pull him up and into me. He has met me half way and we grip each other in the middle of the kitchen. The walls are closing in, at the same time the walls I've built inside me come tumbling down in a roar that rivals any passing train. I was so stupid, so foolish to think they'd stand up against this nightmare.

I'm not sure who's holding up who at this point, and even as we bawl we're mindful of what's important. We can't wake up Ponyboy. He must never know about this. And he won't. The train has done its job masking our sounds, an accomplice to our entangled misery, as it makes its way in the night for some no name, hayseed town like Owasso or Windrixville.

Soda is my best friend, my closest confidant, my keeper of secrets. He's giving me permission for this breakdown, he's encouraging it, because for Soda, nothing is real unless it's raw. And as I'm letting all of it out, I realize there's no other way to maintain sanity.

And so, I cry with all my might into Soda's shoulder. I cry just thinking about us as babies. I cry for the little boys we once were, the ones we are still somewhere inside. The little boys who camped out in the backyard and told ghost stories. The little boys who carefully put lost teeth under pillows. The little boys who were cherished by their parents. All those memories fly through my mind, carried by a painful wind.

Thank God for Soda. There is nobody on Earth I'd rather walk through Hell with, and it's such a shame that's the road we happen to be traveling right now. And dear God, it's only the second night.

 **A/N:** The Outsiders by SE Hinton, Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.

Don't mind me- I wasn't finished with Darry yet. Still practicing with him, trying out his voice, trying to stretch my muscles. Or, his.


End file.
